The Graffiti Hurts Program Helps Fight Crime by Keeping America Beautiful

The Graffiti Hurts program inspires volunteers to clean up graffiti and take back their neighborhoods from vandals.

By Famin Ahmed, NCPC Staff

“If a police officer can arrest someone for possessing drug paraphernalia, why not for carrying spray paint in suspicious surroundings?” asked an editorial published in the Dallas Morning News. “Graffiti is vandalism…. If not challenged, vandalism will weaken stable neighborhoods—a finding confirmed in numerous criminal and social behavior studies. The solution is to fix the problem before it becomes a bigger one.”

Graffiti is defined as any unauthorized inscription, drawing, or slogan that has been painted, scratched, or scribbled into a wall or other public or private surface. Some people may think of graffiti as art, but it is really a sign of urban decay. In some communities, graffiti “tags” may be a sign of gang activity. It’s costly, destructive, and lowers property values in a community. It’s a visual indicator that some people in that community don’t care about the appearance or value of their neighborhood. And consequently, it can invite crime into that community.

Some communities, aware of the dangers that accompany graffiti, have taken bold steps to tackle the problem. Between 1997 and 2005, the Richland County, SC, Sheriff’s Department joined with the community to create a task force that cleaned up graffiti at 1,125 locations, with only 13 percent recidivism of graffiti incidents and a 29 percent reduction in vandalism.

The problem is so severe that a national anti-graffiti program was launched by Keep America Beautiful, Inc., a nonprofit organization dedicated to litter prevention and clean communities, and The Sherwin Williams Company, maker of Krylon brand paint. The Graffiti Hurts: Care For Your Community initiative is a grassroots community education program dedicated to raising awareness about the harmful effects of graffiti vandalism on America’s communities. The program teaches citizens about the importance of graffiti prevention, provides communities with tools and resources to combat the problem, fosters partnerships to get the community involved, and helps communities establish self-sufficient programs to prevent future graffiti vandalism. Graffiti Hurts also offers grants to help communities set up programs to clean up graffiti and educate the community about the importance of graffiti removal.

Gwinnett County, GA, has had success using the Graffiti Hurts program since 2000. County officials created a task force that partnered community members with local law enforcement, and volunteers began working quickly and effectively to remove graffiti as soon as it appeared. In 2007–2008, their program boasted 2,467 volunteers. These volunteers worked 9,869 hours to eradicate graffiti from 1,896 sites amounting to 90,442 square feet.

Some of the success of the program can’t be measured with numbers. “I’ve seen a lot more volunteerism over the last three years,” said Lori Rickards, community programs manager of Gwinnett County. “There’s certainly a level of pride. People call quickly to complain (about graffiti) and we turn them into activists. We even get a number of calls now from people who have removed the graffiti themselves and just called in to report the numbers.” According to Gwinnett County’s survey, there has been a 218 percent increase in citizen-reported incidents since 2003.

How can your community get involved with preventing graffiti vandalism? The first step is to put together a task force, says Kunzler. “We have seen over time that there are three things that are critical to making a change: enforcement, rapid removal, and prevention and education,” she says. The enforcement aspect involves getting the community and task force involved with law enforcement—there must be a commitment from both the community and law enforcement to ensure success. Rapid removal involves a process to remove the graffiti itself—quickly and thoroughly. Kunzler suggests partnering with public works or a private company that can assist with the graffiti removal.

The final component, and one that Kunzler argues is the most important, is prevention and education. Kunzler recommends outreach to schools and civic organizations. Without programs to educate the community on the benefits of graffiti removal, she says, all that work will have been for naught.